The West’s War on Free Speech

With a name like the “National Democratic Institute” (NDI) one might expect the US State Department-funded, corporate-financier chaired front to be the premier proponent of freedom and democracy worldwide. And although it poses as such, it does precisely the opposite. It uses principles like free speech, democracy, press freedom, and human rights as a facade behind which it carries out a politically motivated agenda on behalf of the special interests that fund and direct its activities.

A look at some of the projects aiming to use automated algorithms to identify and combat fake news.

The article itself though, reveals nothing short of a global effort by US tech-giants Google and Facebook, in collaboration with the Western media, to censor any and all media that fails to align with Western-dominated narratives.

The article itself claims:

The French electorate heads to the polls in the second round of presidential elections on May 7, followed by votes in Britain and Germany in the coming months. Computer scientists, tech giants and start-ups are using sophisticated algorithms and reams of online data to quickly — and automatically — spot fake news faster than traditional fact-checking groups can.

The goal, experts say, is to expand these digital tools across Europe, so the region can counter the fake news that caused so much confusion and anger during the United States presidential election in November, when outright false reports routinely spread like wildfire on Facebook and Twitter.

The article then explains that once “fake news” is spotted, it is expunged from the Internet. It reports that:

After criticism of its role in spreading false reports during the United States elections, Facebook introduced a fact-checking tool ahead of the Dutch elections in March and the first round of the French presidential election on April 23. It also removed 30,000 accounts in France that had shared fake news, a small fraction of the approximately 33 million Facebook users in the country.

Were foreign government-linked tech companies purging tens of thousands of accounts ahead of elections in say, Thailand or Russia, it is very likely organizations like NDI and media platforms like the New York Times would cry foul, depicting it as censorship.

In determining what is and isn’t “fake news,” the New York Times offers some clues (emphasis added):

Using a database of verified articles and their artificial intelligence expertise, rival groups — a combination of college teams, independent programmers and groups from existing tech companies — already have been able to accurately predict the veracity of certain claims almost 90 percent of the time, Mr. Pomerleau said. He hopes that figure will rise to the mid-90s before his challenge ends in June.

In other words, “fake news” is determined by comparing it directly to narratives presented by establishment media platforms like the New York Times, the BBC, CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, and others who have notorious track records of serial deception, false reporting, and even war propagandizing.

Nowhere does the New York Times explain how these “verified articles” have been determined to be factually accurate, and instead, it appears that all these algorithms are doing is ensuring all media falls in line with Western narratives.

If media in question coincides with Western-dominated media platforms, it is given a pass – if not, it is slated for expunging as described elsewhere in the New York Times’ piece.

Thus, the National Democratic Institute, who claims on its website to “support and strengthen democratic institutions worldwide through citizen participation, openness and accountability in government,” finds itself promoting what is essentially a worldwide agenda of malicious censorship, manipulating the perception of the globe’s citizenry, not supporting or strengthening it’s participation in any sort of honest political process.

To answer the question as to what the NDI is referring to when it claims other nations are “censoring” free speech and press freedoms, it involves defending local fronts funded by the NDI and its parent organization, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) who merely repeat Western propaganda in local languages and with local spins. When foreign nations attempt to deal with these instances of “fake news,” US fronts like NDI and NED depict it as censorship.

While the West poses as the premier champion of free speech, citizen participation, openness, and accountability, the New York Times article reveals an unfolding plan to utterly crush any narrative that deviates from Western media talking points, thus controlling citizen perception, not encouraging “participation,” and ensuring that the West alone determines what is “opened” and held “accountable.”

No worse scenario can be referenced in human history or even among human fiction than plans to determine for the world through automatic algorithms and artificial intelligence almost in real time what is heard and read and what isn’t. It is even beyond the scope and scale of George Orwell’s cautionary dystopian “1984” novel.

In a truly free society, an educated citizenry is capable of deciding for itself what is “fake news” and what isn’t. Because of the rise of alternatives to the West’s monopoly over global information, many people are doing just that – determining that Western narratives are in fact deceptions. At no other point in modern history has the Western media faced as many alternatives, and as much skepticism on this scale, as well as an ebbing of trust domestically and abroad. It is no surprise then, to find the West resorting to outright censorship, even if it cushions mention of it with terms like “fake news.”

The only way they can win their war on freedom of speech is if we stop talking.

RandyJ/ProudSurvivor

A dystopian reality is unfolding right before the eyes of humanity and almost no one sees it. TPTSB want a society whereby the only way to participate as a member of the hive is to be a thought/speech drone. Fall in line or be excommunicated.

SP_88

These algorithms aren’t trying to stop fake news. They are trying to stop real news so that their fake news is the only news.
It’s government sponsored censorship to control the narrative and keep the masses in line.
Nothing could be more sinister and tyrannical than letting the government control what news we see, and what we don’t see.
I hope that this is brought to a grinding halt by someone with the knowledge to send them a virus or a worm or some other kind of malware that shuts them down. Otherwise we are in a lot of trouble.
Us regular people wouldn’t be able to send them a virus or something to stop them. We would have to resort to burning down their buildings the old fashioned way. I’d rather see a virus take care of this problem.

Frank

Its not the “West” that is attempting to control or stop free speech, it is the LEFT. Conform or be attacked. With the dominance and manipulation of media; the Left seeks to control the information, control the message, control perception, control the people. To dissent against this agenda is to be labeled a Fascist – typical Liberal tactic, to accuse their adversaries of the very crimes that they, themselves, are guilty of. Fascists calling their target victims Fascists as a way of silencing dissent.
SP_88 desires a high-tech defense to this wave of criminal political domination by disrupting their computers and media platforms, but I’m a proponent of old-school methods that they can’t escape from, like burning their houses down (literally and figuratively) and force their asses out into the light, out into the street, where they can be unmasked and held accountable for their treason and other violations of the Constitutional rights of other citizens.
Passivists and other non-confrontational types like to say that “violence solves nothing,” but I dissent and say that violence solves everything, because in the end there is clarity and ground-truth. Politicians and corrupt media controllers deserve no quarter in the war that they have initiated, to grant them any leniency will be to enable them to continue pursuing their objective of enslaving free people.